


Wedding Speeches

by TheHeightsThatWuthered (JosieRuby1)



Category: Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
Genre: Cute, Fluff, Love, M/M, No Plot/Plotless, Pure Unadulterated Fluff, Romance, Wedding, relationship, wedding au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-27
Updated: 2018-12-02
Packaged: 2019-09-01 11:35:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,823
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16764334
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JosieRuby1/pseuds/TheHeightsThatWuthered
Summary: Jay and Nick give speeches at their wedding reception.





	1. Chapter 1

“Nick once told me,” Jay began with a voice that requested everyone be quiet and listen to him. The general chit chat around the reception hall died down and all eyes turned to the head table. Nick and Jay were in the middle, with Nick’s parents beside him and Jordan beside Jay. “That the best advice he ever received was from his father. Mr Carraway taught the young Nick that you should never judge someone because not everyone has had the same privileges you have. Now, as most o you here know Nick well, you will know as well as I do that this is hugely ironic because Nick is one of the most judgemental people around.”

There was laughter from around the room and an indignant look from Nick himself. Jay smiled sweetly and blew him a kiss. “No, to call him judgemental is unfair. The thing about Nick is that he notices things and more importantly he notices people. He notices when someone’s intentions are good and when they aren’t. He notices when the person you are showing isn’t the person you are. For someone like me, who has struggled my whole life to read signals and body language and facial expressions, someone like Nick who picks up on all the tiny nuances of those things seemed like a superhero.” Jay was unabashed in this confession. He saw no reason to be embarrassed by the truth. “Nick didn’t and still doesn’t see himself as anything of the sort, which is probably the saddest thing about him. Here is this man who is beautiful and smart and kind and understand, who knows people and cares about them, who only ever gives everything he has and who doesn’t believe himself to be worth anything much.”

Jay grinned suddenly. He had noticed Nick’s embarrassed smile and anyway had had no intention of making his speech too sad or serious. “Luckily for Nick, he met me and I do know that he is worth everything and more than that I know I am worth everything as well. I know that the pair of us with by New York’s Golden Couple for at least the next few years. I know that all eyes are on us because we deserve to be seen because we are quite frankly – and I apologise for the language – fucking awesome.”

There were a few cheers around the room and a splattering of applause but Jay wasn’t finished. “But I don’t just want to talk about Nick and his self esteem or lack thereof, instead I want to embarrass the hell out of him. There are so so many stories I could tell you about the years I have known the new Nick Gatsby.” He looked over at Nick who had a worried expression behind his smile. Jay just winked at him. “Nick wanted to be a writer and yet he ended up in Bonds, what does that tell you about the great American dream, people? It tells you that everybody needs a rich husband.” Jay waited for the laughter to subside again, then went on. “A lot of you don’t know about the first time Nick and I met It was at one of the nationally famous Gatsby parties but Nick was an exception. Nick was the only person invited to one of my parties and he was the only one I never got rid of. Thank god. Nick spent the first half of the night walking around the party talking to anyone would listen, brandishing his invitation as though it was a Nobel Peace Prize and asking if anyone has seen ‘Mr Gatsby’. He was adorable from the start. The second half was spent getting as drunk as he possibly could.

“Eventually, he found me and he was pretty hammered at this point. Now, I was pretty sure Nick would know me once he saw me because for weeks before this we had had a through the window relationship. I had caught him look at me through his cottage window a few times – or so I had thought – and I thought he must have seen me watching him. But it turned out he had no idea who I was and he started talking to me about all these rumours he’s heard about the great Jay Gatsby, about how he’s a traitor to the country or a mass murderer or an oxford man or related to the president. Of course, at the time this was how I wanted to be seen, I wanted the shroud of mystery that stopped anyone from knowing who the real Jay Gatsby was. So Nick is telling me all these stories and I tell him that I’ve been a bad host and that I am Jay Gatsby. Now I have already mentioned that I struggle to read emotion from people but what I was getting from Nick in that moment was ‘Wow I am gay.’ Like an alarm just going ‘gay gay gay gay’. Still who could blame him from being reminded how gay he is while looking at this beautiful face” Jay winked at the crowd then and got a wolf whistle in return, though he couldn’t see where from.

“Admittedly there was a part of me that wasn’t to tell Nick the truth from the beginning but I couldn’t do that. There were two reasons, the first and the smaller was that I was so deep into the story that I had carved for myself, the story that never added up, that I couldn’t see a way to just give it up. But the main reason was that I wanted to see how far I could take these stories until Nick would snap and tell me he was fed up of my bullshit.”

“I never did,” Nick muttered.

“He never did!” Jay repeated for the crowd. “He sat there in my little yellow car, as I raced through New York City and listened as I told him that I was decorated in medals from every single country in Europe, as I told him that I had graduated from Oxford, as I created this lavish history for myself that was far too fanciful for even an idiot to believe, let alone an Ivy League educated man such as Nick Carraway now Gatsby. Yet he just listened and he fell in love. The most amazing, the most magical thing though was that he didn’t fall in love with the stories, he fell in love with the man who was telling the stories. Nick, my darling,” Jay turned to look at him as he began to close. “You were the first person who was able to love me for everything that I am, for James Gatz and for Jay Gatsby. You are the only person I want to be with. Here’s to waking up together every morning for the rest of our lives.”

Nick stood up, made the toast and took a sip from his glass. He moved closer to Jay and pressed their lips together which got another round of applause.


	2. Nick's Speech

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's Nick's turn.

“My turn,” Nick said quietly to Jay. He waited for Jay to take his seat again and for everyone to become quiet before starting with his own speech. “As I was growing up, the idea of marriage seemed something that was reserved for other people. Even the idea of finding someone I could love seemed impossible. Love and marriage was for boys who loved girls and for girls who loved boys. I spent time believing that I was excluded from that club and that I couldn’t even pretend I was a part of. Although pretend I did.” Nick laughed slightly at the memory. “I am not the only gay person guilty of pretending to be straight. Take my lesbian ex-girlfriend for example.”

On cue Jordan stood up and took a bow, gaining cheers and laughter across the room. Nick grinned and continued once Jordan had sat down. “But in the end, being true to myself was the only way I could end up happy and it was the only way I could begin to learn that there was no elite club that I was banned from. There was no right or wrong way to love. When I moved to Long Island it wasn’t with the hope of finding romance, it was with the hope of becoming a New Yorker, whatever that meant – I still couldn’t tell you what that means. But what I found here, was not only the best friends I have known in my entire life, friends with whom I can have a serious conversation or laugh with until the early hours, friends who are people who can actually be called upon when needed. But as well as that, I found the most ridiculous man you will never meet. He lived in what is essentially a castle that he commissioned himself and he wore pink – sorry “salmon” – suits. He threw lavish parties that I thought were deeply inconsiderate when I was trying to sleep or write.” He grinned at Jay. “Then I received the invitation that Jay already spoke of. The ridiculous man stopped just being the man next door and began to be my very obviously a liar friend. I was too dumbfounded to call him out and too intrigued to see how far he was willing to go. In the end, there were no callouts needed, the truth came to us as it always would. And much more than truth came along with it. Love, the love I had always believed to be impossible was suddenly standing in front of me. We are the cliché, the boy next door, but we are the best version of that cliché that you will ever find.”

Ni turned to look at Jay. “Jay Gatsby, you have welcomed me into your life, into your home and into your heart, and now you have given me your name. There are no words for the honour I feel at being your husband and knowing that I get to see your face for the rest of my life and know that you are mine and I am yours.” He turned back to the crowd, and added, as though in an afterthought, “He is still the most ridiculous man I’ve net though.”

Laughter, applause and cheers filled the room as Nick returned to his seat. He couldn’t stop the grin on his face and neither did he want to. Jay was beaming right back at him and Nick could not believe his luck. People had said that when it comes to relationships and marriage that you just know when it’s right but he had never believed them. He thought it a hoax that everyone was in on until it happened to him. Until it turned out to be real. Until he just knew. Until the man he knew was the one believed him to be the one as well.


End file.
